Boundary changes will transform political map (From Your Local Guardian)

Boundary changes will transform Wandsworth, Streatham and Lambeth's political map

5:25pm Monday 12th September 2011 in Wandsworth

The Tooting constituency will be merged with Streatham and Battersea with Vauxhall in sweeping changes proposed by the Boundary Commission for England.

There will be a new Clapham Common seat and the Putney constituency will be expanded under the new plans, which were revealed after a document was leaked on the internet this afternoon.

The document said: “In the Borough of Wandsworth, we propose a Putney constituency that is expanded to include the Fairfield ward from the existing Battersea constituency.

“We noted that to include another neighbouring Wandsworth ward in this constituency would take the electorate over five per cent above the electoral quota. We propose to include the Merton ward of Wimbledon Park, from the existing Wimbledon constituency.

“We noted that the existing Battersea constituency had an electorate within 5 per cent of the electoral quota, but we considered that changes made to neighbouring constituencies made it difficult to retain the constituency as unchanged.

“The electoral size of the wards in Wandsworth made it difficult to create constituencies within 5 per cent of the electoral quota without dividing wards. To avoid this, we propose three constituencies that contain parts of the boroughs of Lambeth and Wandsworth. Therefore we propose a Streatham and Tooting constituency that contains four Lambeth wards and four Wandsworth wards, a Battersea and Vauxhall constituency that contains four Lambeth wards and four Wandsworth wards, and a Clapham Common constituency that contains three Lambeth wards and five Wandsworth wards. The remaining eight Lambeth wards are included in our proposed Brixton constituency.”

The commission, an independent and impartial non-departmental public body responsible for reviewing constituency boundaries in England, announced its plans after a review called for by Parliament.

The London region has been allocated 68 constituencies – a reduction of five from the current position.

The commission was tasked with reducing the number of constituencies in the UK from 650 to 600, ensuring that – apart from two exceptions – each seat has an electorate of between 72,810 and 80,473.

There will now be a 12-week consultation period on the initial proposals, from September 13 to December 5.

The commission, after further revision and the publication of revised proposals, will recommend changes to Parliament in2013.